


The World to Come

by bwolves



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwolves/pseuds/bwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the Inquisitor couldn't return to their own time during In Hushed Whispers?  Adrianna Trevelyan is thrown into a world that has lost all hope and must find a way to save it.  </p>
<p>Also features Warden-Commander Elissa Cousland as the leader of the Ferelden resistance and Leona Hawke as the freelancing demon fighter getting shit done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World to Come

**Author's Note:**

> Although this started off as a point of genuine interest after playing the mage mission, I actually designed this story for the expressed purpose of creating the Warden/Hawke/Inquisitor dream team that Thedas deserves to see. The story will focus mostly on them dealing with everything and leading in their own ways, but I'll be including other warden origins and many of the companion characters from all three games. Thanks for reading!

_In order to be reborn, one must first die._

 

She was in the Fade.

Not in a dream and not because she was dead, but because there had been nowhere else to go when the amulet had been shattered and the soldiers and demons of Redcliffe Castle had broken down the doors to Alexius’ stronghold.

“This has been your worse plan yet, Trevelyan,” her mage companion muttered, supporting the sagging form of Cassandra Pentaghast with one arm as he wielded his staff with the other.

She was too weary to even respond, although the fear that had settled in the pit of her stomach flared up again. She pushed it back down and focused on looking out for demons. The mark burned her hand and her whole body shook in exhaustion. Opening the rift into the Fade had taken more effort than she had anticipated.

Leliana was doing her best to support Sera behind them, but one quick glance behind showed that both of them were fading fast. They’d been walking in the Fade for what seemed like hours and had gotten no closer to the Fade rift in the distance than they had been when they first entered. It seemed that the demon in this particular prison wanted to kill them slowly.

Adrianna Trevelyan was not in the mood to be toyed with.

She stopped, swaying a bit from the jarring pain in her body every time she moved too quickly. The others stopped as well.

“What?” Leliana’s harsh voice came from behind, strained, and Adrianna was reminded of the documents she had found detailing exactly what the Venatori had done to the proud spymaster. Her stomach roiled.

She raised her hand, palm up, and the mark sputtered with green energy. “I think I should try to open a rift here.”

“I would highly advise against that,” Dorian responded sharply, and Cassandra raised her head weakly from beside him, although did not speak. “We don’t know how the magic of the mark will work inside the Fade. Magic isn’t exactly stable here.”

“Then we die,” Leliana countered.

“Or, we could die and make things even worse for this world if it backfires.”

While they argued, Adrianna wondered why they hadn’t seen any demons yet.

“This world? This is your world now and it really couldn’t be much worse.”

They really should have been attacked by multiple demons by now. If the Elder One had been able to track them down in the real world from his seat in the Black City, it must be easier for him to find them in the Fade, no? What was different?

Dorian laughed, although it was noticeably strained. “Really? How good is your imagination, Sister Nightingale? Don’t worry, things could always be worse.”

On a whim, Adrianna glanced over at Sera. She wasn’t moving. “Sera,” she said, interrupting the argument. “Sera, stay awake. Sera!”

Moved from their dispute, both Dorian and Leliana set their charges on the ground. Cassandra was able to manage a weak sitting position, while the rest of them crowded around the motionless elf.

“Sera,” Adrianna repeated, slapping her face lightly. She was about to check her pulse when the elf’s eyes fluttered briefly, almost completely red with red lyrium infection.

“I’m fine, right?” She muttered, frowning. “Let a person sodding rest.”

Adrianna had sagged with relief when another noise- the growl of a pride demon- sounded from around the corner.

“Demons,” Dorian stated, almost emotionless. “Looks like we muddled about in one place a bit too long.”

“We can still fight,” Leliana answered fiercely, reaching for the bow on her back.

A smaller demon- a sloth demon- skidded around the corner, and Adrianna knew it would be on them in seconds. She saw it all happen slower than real-time- saw Dorian grab his staff and Leliana notch her bow and Cassandra make a desperate attempt to rise and at the very least hold her sword unsheathed in front of her. This was not it. This was not how they would die.

She turned and focused on the mark on her hand, tugging at the Fade, feeling it rip the Veil in between worlds. But the mark was made of magic infused with her body and it wasn’t made to indiscriminately rip open holes in the Veil. She screamed at the pushback against her body, white hot pain racing down her arm to her very heart until she swore the beating slowed.

She faintly heard the shockwave of the Veil tearing open and Dorian yelling at her to jump through and then she had tumbled down the rabbit hole yet again, vision a swirl of green and bright white.

 

* * *

 

_Her dreams were terrifying._

_She lost track of the amount of times she had fallen, faltered, died. The Fade seemed to never tire of showing her failures, showing her weaknesses, mocking and perverting every good intention she ever had. Maybe she really was nothing. Maybe no one really cared what she did. Maybe she was just invisible, trapped in this dream sequence forever, meant for nothing._

_Maybe there was no fear demon. Maybe this was the truth._

“Herald, wake up!”

It was Dorian.

She coughed, suddenly wide awake as she doubled over from the sensitivity in her ribs. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse.

“What happened?”

“Well, we made it out of the Fade,” he answered grimly, They were in a house now- or at least what could charitably be described as a house, what with the holes in the walls and dust and dirt everywhere. Adrianna was propped up against the wall and every muscle screamed as she tried to pull herself into a sitting position. Sera and Leliana lay motionless across the room, but she could still see the slight rise and fall of their chests. Cassandra was beside them, barely conscious, but eyes still half-open.

“How are we still alive?” Adrianna asked incredulously.

“I don’t know that anyone here is feeling particularly alive,” he huffed in response, and she realized that he was holding his side, pressing down over a pair of bloody scratch marks. She let out a tiny gasp and she leaned forward to examine it.

“Dorian, how-“

“One of those creepy spindly demons on the way out,” he explained, mouth twisted to the side ruefully. “Took a swipe at me before I could raise my staff. You were barely conscious enough to close the rift, but you got it done. There’s still some demons outside though. I burned the last ones that came close to a crisp, so they’re a little more cautious now.”

Adrianna sagged back against the wall, breaths coming quicker. It was too much for her to handle, she couldn’t- they were all going to die and it was going to be her fault because she couldn’t find a way. She was the Herald, with the mark of Andraste on her hand, but this was a world that she did not know. This was a world where there was no Andraste, the Maker had fallen, and any hope that had existed in the last world seemed to have vanished.

Here, she was nothing.

She raised herself up slowly, and crossed the room to where Sera’s bow was still clutched in her hand. She eased it out if her death grip and grabbed a bundle of arrows. She wasn’t as good an archer as her brother, but she also wasn’t fast enough right now to suit her usual fighting style.

She tried very, very hard not to think about her family.

“How long have we been out here?”

“An hour, give or take,” Dorian answered, handsome face screwed into a grimace. “Be careful, Trevelyan.”

There was no reason left to be careful, but she appreciated the sentiment. She crouched below the open window and peered over the top of the window sill, arrow already notched.

It was dark outside and she could barely see anything but the mass of demons circling the house. There were too many for the group to take on by themselves, especially since they had two completely unconscious people and Cassandra, who was close to that herself.

“They’re just demons, why don’t they just charge all at once?” She muttered, thinking of the last few times she had fought them.

“Because they don’t have to anymore,” Dorian answered quietly. “The demon you fought before were desperate for our world. This is their world now. They don’t need to kill us to stay here.”

A chill rolled through her and she gripped the bow in her hands tighter. But she couldn’t attack them yet, not without potentially inciting a mass attack. “So we just wait for them to attack us.”

“I’m not suggesting that either,” he sighed, and she heard him shift to accommodate the wound on his side better. “In fact, I don’t think they will. I think they’re just waiting for something bigger and nastier to get here.”

She remembered the roar they had all heard inside Redcliffe before the troops burst through- something very large and very angry- and another wave of helplessness washed over her. “We need to run.”

“That would be the best option. Don’t know how we’re going to accomplish that though.”

They would have to leave behind Sera and Leliana, potentially Cassandra. As unwelcome as it was, the thought hit her with all the subtlety of a bronto and she knew that Dorian was thinking the same thing. Absolutely not. She was not going to acknowledge it.

“Adrianna.”

“No.”

She glanced back at him and all of a sudden realized that he wanted her to leave him behind too. He couldn’t be that badly off.

“He is right, Herald.”

Adrianna swiveled in surprise at Cassandra’s faint but distinct voice. She was struggling, but her conviction was clear. Adrianna wilted. “Cassandra, I can’t.”

“You can, and you will,” she answered, not sharply, but firmly. “You are the one with the mark. You are the only chance anyone has of stopping this madness, even in this world.”

This world is gone, she wanted to scream, but didn’t because she knew that Cassandra was still right. She stayed silent.

“We will cover your escape,” she added, motioning for the bow that Adrianna still gripped.

Adrianna looked at her wearily. “I don’t think you can draw it.”

“I might surprise you,” she retorted, almost wryly, and Adrianna wanted to cry.

“Hop to it, Herald,” Dorian added, grasping for the staff beside him. “We don’t have much time as it is.”

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. She wasn't going to run and save her own life at the cost of all these others.

“Lady Trevelyan, it is time to go,” Cassandra managed to make her way to the window, bow in hand, and notched an arrow, ready to cover her escape. “We don’t know when that beast might get here. You must run.”

“I’ll create a diversion,” Dorian added, mustering up more magic.

“I-“ A fiery explosion outside had already gone off and a swarm of activity occurred on the opposite side of the clearing and Dorian moved to almost push her out of the door.

She stumbled into the muddy clearing, where she lost her footing and almost tripped over herself. Adrenaline was racing through her system and she barely noticed the burn in her muscles or the throbbing of her hand. The darkness was pressing into her, suffocating her, but she knew how to use it.

She heard the whistle of an arrow and saw Cassandra’s skills send an arrow straight into a demon illuminated by Dorian’s fire. She was someone else, she was darkness, she was anything but Adrianna Trevelyan, who was running away and leaving her friends to die.

Suddenly, an intense burst of fire lit up everything, so bright that she was momentarily blinded, and she stumbled to the ground. She heard the eerie scream of a terror demon only a few feet away and guessed that it was temporarily disabled as well. She could see it charging her as soon as she opened her eyes, but shapes were blurry and there were multiples of them and she struggled to grab her daggers from her belt.

She managed to dive to the side as it slashed at her, but she landed awkwardly on her shoulder and yelled aloud in pain.

She was better than this, she could fight better than this.

But her reflexes were so much slower than she knew them to be and her muscles protested every step. Adrianna scrambled to her feet and ducked another swipe to counter with her blade, swinging out in the hopes of hitting something. She was rewarded with the feeling of her blade cutting through rotting flesh and the creature shrieked with a combination of pain and anger.

The flash happened again and they both tumbled down, Adrianna grabbing her head. She had never seen anything like that from Dorian before- it couldn’t be him- and she hoped it wasn’t some new demon trick. The sounds of fighting got louder and she could swear she heard blades ringing in her ears, like the cavalry that she so desperately wished would arrive.

She rose to her feet again and saw a golden opportunity as the demon stayed hunched over. She drove her dagger right through its back and watched it thrash underneath her blade, screaming. She twisted the dagger deeper and tried to ignore the acid-like blood that burned at her glove-less hand. In its death throes, it managed to catch her with a flailing arm and sent her flying back. Her head slammed against the ground with a terrifying crack.

She lay there, unable to get up.

A shape moved over her and it prayed that it wasn’t a demon, here to finish her off, because there wasn’t much she could do if it was.

She saw the vague shape of a woman, with a staff slung over her back and the armor of a warrior, before she blacked out.

 

* * *

 

She hated the Fade and she’d been in it much too often in the past 24 hours.

Adrianna Trevelyan awoke clawing her way out, forcing the dreams back down and opening her eyes to a harsh, bright light. Her arm came up to block the light from her eyes almost immediately, and she moaned at the strain in her muscles.

This hadn’t been the first time in the past two months that she had woken up in a nondescript infirmary bed with unnatural pain throughout her entire body.

She blinked, eyelashes brushing against the skin of her arm. She couldn’t believe she was still breathing. But what about the others?

She lowered her arm tentatively and let her eyes adjust to the light slowly. It wasn’t that bright at all, she realized after a moment. She flexed all her limbs to check for any damage before propping herself into a sitting position, back against the pillow.

She was in a small bedroom, similar to those they had to house servants in her family’s estate in Ostwick. The window on the opposite wall was barred, but judging from the light coming through, she could assume it was midmorning.

Memories were coming back to her now and she remembered Cassandra, Sera, Dorian, and Leliana, fighting through the hallways and courtyards of Redcliffe Castle, and then later in the Fade and the clearing wherever they had ended up. There was the magister, Alexius, and the spell he had used to cast them forward in time, to a time when Thedas had lost all hope and the Elder One sat on the throne of the Black City.

And then there was the broken amulet, the one tool that could have helped them fix all this, shattered on the ground in pieces too fine to ever hope to piece together. Adrianna bit her lip, realizing the likely reality of where- or when- she was.

_Well, shit._

She carefully swung her legs off the bed, toes tentatively touching the cold stone floor. Her muscles groaned in protest, but she carefully lowered herself onto flat feet and stood with the hope of getting some answers. The door was her first option and she reached for it only to notice the slight shimmer around it mere seconds before she would have shocked herself.

“Wonderful,” Adrianna muttered, retracting her hand quickly. “Protected by magic.”

She didn’t like the implication that she was being kept prisoner. Apparently, history was repeating itself. They- whoever they were- had also taken her weapons and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been without a dagger somewhere on her body. It was making her anxious.

She turned to the window, her stomach dropping. Part of her didn’t want to see it, but the other more rational side of her knew she needed to know. It had been too dark and chaotic for her to notice much of anything during the fight and she needed all the facts. She stepped forward and grasped the cold metal in her hands, pulling herself forward so that she could see as much as possible through the bars.

Just as she had feared, the sky was painted green with the skeins of the Fade that bled through, and the Breach had forced a gaping hole in the sky like a mouth ready to swallow the world. It was just plain unnatural, and Adrianna shuddered.

So this was what the end of the world looked like.

She carefully stepped back, releasing the bars, and returned to the sanctuary of her bed. She sat on the edge of it, mouth dry, analytical brain racing a mile a minute. She needed a plan.

 

* * *

 

Adrianna spent the next thirty minutes in a combination of compiling all the facts that she knew and searching the room for something she could use as a weapon. She had no luck on either count and she was ready to give up when she heard someone on the other side of the door. 

She frantically glanced around for anything- literally anything- she could defend herself with, but ran out of time. She swiveled to face the woman entering.

She was very clearly a mage, perhaps the one who had cast the enchantment on the door and certainly the one who had removed it. Her dark eyes looked back at Adrianna expectantly from under dark brown bangs. She had a small, snub nose and her hair was just long enough to have collected over one shoulder in waves. She seemed familiar for some reason and Adrianna vaguely remembered the armored mage that had appeared over her just before she blacked out.

The mage closed the door behind her very slowly, voice almost questioning. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Adrianna answered in confusion before remembering that she was a prisoner and politeness shouldn’t really be a priority at the moment. She tensed, eyes flicking to the now un-enchanted door behind the mage. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Solona Amell,” she replied, motioning to the plate of food she was carrying- a loaf of bread, some cheese, and an apple, it looked. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Yes, but who are you?” Adrianna pressed, eying the food hungrily.

“Is there a place you would like me to start?” The dark-haired mage retorted, although more cheerfully than Adrianna expected. “You should really work on your line of questioning when captured.” She set the food down at the foot of the bed.

Well, this wasn’t really what Adrianna had been expecting. She gaped for a moment, and then sighed in annoyance. “Okay, fine. What about the others I was with? There was a mage and an elf and a Seeker and-“

“We found them,” she answered, and Adrianna felt a rush of relief flood her.

“And they’re all right?”

Solona shrugged. “We’re working on it.”

Although she wasn’t thrilled with that answer, it was better than her previous expectation that they were all dead. “Where am I, then? Or more specifically, when am I?”

“Still ‘in the future’,” Solona answered with air quotes. In response to Adrianna’s surprise, she shrugged. “One of your companions told us. I’m still a little confused as to how all that works,” she muttered to herself as an aside. “But apparently you’re the Herald of Andraste, returned after a whole year away.”

“I am the Herald of Andraste,” Adrianna protested, then bit her lip. “Well, I’m not, but I can close the rifts and that’s all that matters.”

“So are you or aren’t you? Cause it would be a big help if you were.” The mage asked, her face scrunched in confusion.

“I am,” she finally blurted, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Listen, if you are an ally, I need to talk to Dorian Pavus. We need to figure out how to get this spell reversed, how to send us back to when none of this ever happened. Where is he?”

“Being detained, same as you,” she shrugged and crossed her arms. “As are the rest of your group. But you can’t go back. The amulet was shattered.”

“We have to go back,” Adrianna retorted adamantly, the gaping hole of the Breach still imprinted in her mind. “It’s magic, there’s always a way around things. We can figure out another way to reverse it. Or we can learn it and cast another spell, one that will send us back. Right?”

“Because this magic has worked so well for us in the first place,” she answered hotly, eyes flashing, and the light-hearted mage from before seemed to vanish. She opened her mouth to say more, but then closed it, changing her mind. She paused for a moment and Adrianna saw something not unlike pity in her eyes. “The world has changed. We can’t change it back.”

She turned to leave and Adrianna reached out to stop her, but caught herself just in time. “Wait. What’s going to happen to me? When do I get out of here?”

The mage turned. “The Commander is deciding what to do with you.”

A flood of relief poured into her system and she took a step closer. “The Commander of what? Do you mean Cullen? Are you a part of the Inquisition still?”

This time, the pity was gone from Solona’s eyes and Adrianna could see her raise that tough exterior. “No, Cullen Rutherford is dead. So is the Inqusition.” She nodded at the walls around them. “You’re at Soldier’s Peak and I’m talking about the Commander of the Grey.”

She exited and Adrianna saw the light shimmer of a magic barrier reappear over the door. She sagged back onto the bed, feeling exhaustion seep through her bones again.


End file.
